Always. It was the one thing that always stood out for me. I was a constant scribbler as a child, making up little stories and dreaming of my book covers! I went on to study journalism in college but my career path veered off in different directions and I ended up working behind the scenes in radio for years, not thinking I’d ever actually be published. I wrote my first novel, The Dead Summer, while on maternity leave with my first daughter and was lucky enough to get a publishing deal and it’s all taken off from there. Subsequently, through fate and circumstance, I was forced to give up full time work a couple of years ago and this has led to my becoming a writer to earn a crust, as well as for pleasure! With all of my various experience, I now work as a speechwriter, newspaper commentator, radio and brochure copywriter and also VO artist from home part time.
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Sing Me To Sleep is quite a sad story about how life turns out because something terrible happened, and how maybe that was the way it was meant to be all along. Jenny Mycroft dies in a car crash in 1997, leaving her husband Ed and baby daughter Bee behind. But Jenny can’t leave, Her spirit lives on in their home, watching helplessly as their lives go on without her. The story spans thirty years – from Ed and Jenny’s first meeting at college, through Ed’s new love with Rowan, through Bee growing to adulthood. We also learn why it is that Jenny can’t leave her family and what drives her to stay on and watch over them. Can she ever find the peace to move on? Or does she really want to?
I love the idea of a ghost hanging around watching over those she loved. I often feel that my own mum is still with me, where did the inspiration come from to write about a ghost?
I love that idea too – I’ve always been fascinated by ghosts and the afterlife. On one hand, it seems so impossible but then on the other, something happens in your daily life and you really can’t help but think there’s a presence still there – by the way as I just typed that, my house alarm went off completely out of the blue! Sign or short wire?! Who knows!
My first two novels, The Dead Summer and The Dark Water were pure ghost stories, telling the tales from the point of view of living people being haunted by the dead and delving into the past to find out why. The stories of the hauntings in both cases were told parallel to the backstory of the people behind them and the reasons why they came back after death. With Sing Me To Sleep, I wanted to explore the story from the other side, however – why someone might feel unable to pass over completely, why they might not want to leave those they’ve loved behind and their helplessness at having to watch their own life unfold without them.
I originally started Sing Me To Sleep a couple of years ago but had shelved the story in favour of another. In the summer of 2012, however, I lost a friend to cancer – someone I very much admired – and it really affected me deeply. She left behind a young family too. Her death came after a period in my life which had been quite traumatic and I thought that the time felt right to revisit the story – I felt I had a lot of sadness that I needed to put somewhere, sadness that just comes from everyday life and loss – but also the feeling that despite it all, life goes on – and it can be good.
